HISTORY OF THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF YUCATAN AND OF THE ITZAS

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account of the protracted and distressing illness of the said
President, which grew worse and worse every day. So that God permitted
that from this storm should result one calm death, and that, through
antagonistic means, there should be added new delays to this
conversion.

"Meanwhile there were not wanting priests of good courage who wished to
take part in the conversion of these souls, and Fray Diego Palomino
having died in the highlands of Chol from illness which attacked him
there, God moved the Reverend Reader, Fray Christobal de Prada, with
such powerful inclinations, that while he was giving a course in
philosophy in this convent of Guatemala with great credit and esteem,
and without being detained by the love of his scholars or the arguments
of his friends, he gave up his chair and went to the wilderness, where
he devoted himself with so much fervor and zeal to the education of
those heathen that in a short time he perfected himself in the language
of Chol, of which he had already learned the rudiments; and he went